Anyone want to hear a hilarious Matrox story?

[Ozymandis]

I have had odd problems with my G400 max since day one. It is works great in some games (UT, Omnikron, Techdemo) and crashes quickly in others (Shogo, Q3test, Q2, Quake, Expendable, Heretic 2). I had done everything, Irq's, force agp 1x, everything. It seemed like if I did a reboot and then entered one of these games it would run fine... but if I just tried to run one when my PC had been on for awhile it just locked up. Well, I keep thinking it was heat, but why weren't all the games crashing? So I opened up my case and set a house fan next to it blowing in. Guess what? Not a single crash in 3 days, with the PC on most of the time and running servers and what not. Why would heat crash some games and leave others untouched? It makes no sense. This is my story, and I'd like to hear what kind of explanation I can get for this oddity.

[Joel]

Obviously some games stress the system harder than others thus causeing additional heat.

Joel

[HollyBerri]

Is that really true, Joel? It seems weird... or are you saying that some software makes the hardware work harder/more often, which makes the hardware (HDD, video card... does a CD-ROM drive produce heat?) produce more heat??

And how can you tell? How on earth could UT stress the hardware less than Quake??

I'm not meaning to be a smart-ass, really trying to understand how things work...

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Holly

[Jorden]

Not the general hardware, Holly, but the CPU. Both the Pentium-whatever and the G400 CPU stress more in UT (bigger, complexer graphics) than in Quake.

Thus they produce more heat (and yes, a CD-ROM produces heat ). If Oztmandis his system can't get rid of all this heat quickly enough, it'll hang/crash or whatever.

Jorden.

[Brian R.]

Jorden, there is a disconnect here because Ozymandis said Quake caused lock-ups and UT did not. And only if the computer had been on awhile... Not a typical heat problem.

[Joel]

But he did say that after opening the case and putting a fan to the side of it he has not had anymore lockups. So that would indicate some type of heat related problem to me.

Joel

[Ozymandis]

Yeah, I am certain that the problem was heat related... and UT and Unreal both had no problem... so I think perhaps the polygon complexity had a lot to do with it. BTW, Unreal with TurboGL crashed in the same fashion. I am just glad my system is stable, but the fan is so loud that I have to use headphones... hehe.

[Johnny Ray]

A remotely similar situation with me. I mostly play TFC, and absolutely no problems. But when I'd play MechWarrior 3 for a while, lock-ups would usually occur. Add a few fans, or open the case, no problems. No other changes.

I know I'm comparing OpenGL to DirectX, but none of the other DirectX games I've checked out (SlaveZero, Heavy Gear II, etc.), which are certainly graphics intensive, crash with my original (i.e., 1 fan, case closed) set up.



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PIII450 => 504 MHz, Asus P2B, G400MAX, PowerDesk 5.30, Aureal 2500 Vortex2, DirectX 7.0, Adaptec AHA-2940UW and Fireport40 Dual UW SCSI controllers, etc.

[scotty]

i had been stably running my g200 at 99mhz for months, then when i pulled out nfs3 for the first time since o/cing, the system hung after 30 secs. i guess it just goes to show that you need to test several different games or apps when you're trying to find that stable point. seems odd tho that nfs3 produced more heat than q3a, hl, ut, ss2, etc. maybe it's because i was driving a real hot-rod? bwaa-haa-ha... ha.

anyway, everything's fine now at 97mhz.

Ozymandis, it might just be a case of a bad case for your rig. without o/cing, the thing should run fine, but with these homemade systems sometimes extra airflow is needed. have you tried a slot fan, or other such o/c cooling techniques?



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p2 266@300 (4x75mhz) | qdi legend-v, lx chipset, bios 2.0sl | 96 mb pc100 | mill g200agp@99mhz 8mb sg, bios 2.6, pd 5.3 | win 98se

[chihuang]

I think Q3 does push the CPU harder. I thought my o/c Celeron was stable in the past, but after suffering frequent lockups (besides the G400/Live problem) when I play Q3, I clock it down and everything runs well.

BTW, I have a question:

What kind of fan are on you guys' G400 MAX? Mine looks like some kind of cheap crap fan instead of AVVID which is shown in most pictures online. The AVVID kind has more blades and larger center motor, but the one on mine has fewer blades (about 7, my computer is running, can't tell right now) w/ smaller center motor.

[rei]

Standard four fan setup in mine.

1 (standard power supply fan)
2 (GlobalWIN FEP32 on the slotket CPU)
3. at bottom front bringing air in
4. at back near CPU taking air out

Nothing fancy, noticeably noisier (hum) than without the last 3 fans, no peltier, no huge refridgerated base...helps my Celeron run at 567 MHz. Now if only I could figure out MGATweak heh...

[Ozymandis]

BTW, my PC is a Gateway. The only things not stock are the G400max and the network cards.

[mj12]

Thought that I would give me two cents.
I have a pIII500 o/c to 560 with a g400max etc. My system is very stable. I have the inwin A-500 midtower with a 300watt power supply. I turned the powersupply fan around so that it blow air out of the case as opposed to before it was sucking air in. This alone really cooled it down. Then I carefully, (yeah right) dismantled the retail fan off of my pIII and stuck on a computernerd.com dual fan heatsink http://www.computernerd.com/coolsp03.html. I even o/c my pIII500 to 600 and no heat problems etc. except that my memory is not stable at that bus speed, so until I get some PC133memory 560 will do. BTW, I leave my case on and no heat problems. Leaving case off is not favorable as my u2w scsi is just too damn loud.

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[DuRaNgO]

hey chihuang,
was that a retail max from the online store or from a dealer?
jim

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PIII-500mhz @ 620 ! with an Abit BE6 mobo
128mb pc-100
Mill G400 (YAHOO!!!) 32mb @ 165/205 with MGATweak-410mhz, (2.5, 2, 2.5), PD 5.30 & bios 1.5-22
Maxtor 14.3 gb Uata66 hdd
SB Live!
Winblows 98se & DX7
32 lbs. of fans, heatsinks and aluminum ductwork
3DMark Result 5954.69 3DMarks
Synthetic CPU 3D Speed 9325.69 CPU 3DMarks
Rasterizer Score 2791.72 3DRasterMarks
Game 1 - Race 65.07 FPS
Game 2 - First Person 54.89 FPS
Fill Rate 268.79 MTexels/s